here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what that is my terror cells that no one wishes to feature is on the on the liberal and the christian public. can really go to the.

everyone i'm abby martin and this is breaking the set so if you think you still have the right to due process in this country think again the national defense authorization act quietly signed into law by president obama last year gave the military the right to indefinitely detain u.s. citizens without a trial luckily district judge catherine forrest ordered a temporary block on the n.b.a.'s indefinite detention provision suggesting indefinite detention without due process is unconstitutional great right so we still have due process sadly now obama's attorneys immediately put an emergency injunction and a permanent stay on judge forest's ruling on tuesday a three judge panel approved so why would obama pursue such an aggressive response to a judge that he himself appointed pulitzer prize winning journalist chris hedges put it like this he said the fact that they responded so aggressively i think is that in. cation to me and the lawyers that they are already using the law because of the

laws taken off the books and their hold on us citizens and military facilities that's what section ten twenty one permits the military to carry out domestic policing pulled us citizens and their facilities strip them of due process that of course hold them in their offshore penal colonies like one ton of a bay or bag room so if they were holding citizens in a lot of stricken off the books as unconstitutional as judge forrest did they would be in contempt of court so there you have it you can still be indefinitely detained for being accused of supporting terrorism and if you're not pissed you should be i am and that's why i'm breaking the set. of beliefs about a specific. the first presidential debate is tonight it's pretty much a full out media blitz c.n.n. m s n b c of enlisted a new year's eve style countdown to the debates as anchors and talking heads all

over the country are speculating about who is going to take that coveted top spot but is that the question we should be weighing in on or rather she would be asking ourselves does the two party system give us nothing more than an illusion of choice and leadership and a break down the state of american politics today i'm joined by bruce dixon managing editor of the black agenda report bruce thank you so much for taking the time to come on. thanks for inviting me so the two party system isn't set up in a way to just a piece people into thinking that they have a choice i mean you just wrote an article about how similar these two candidates are expand upon their similarities various. well i mean the big difference so there are big differences ok the republicans are the permanent party of wall street big insurance big agriculture and. big tobacco big real estate military contractors. and the democrats are

a permanent part of it wall street military contractors charter schools privatizers big. and so on and so forth but the big difference is that i guess of the democrats are not white supremacists and some of them are for choice sometimes and even every some sometimes so it's really not a lot of choices. that we owe it seems the american political system is democracy groups and people. you also said something that really struck me as someone articles you said quote the fact is that one hundred twenty percent evil republicans offer the only justification for our support of one hundred percent evil democrats so is this just an epic branding campaign bruce where we're just kind of condition into voting against candidates who are less evil. then the most evil. that's exactly where that is as a matter of fact in twenty or the magazine advertising age the obama campaign you

or for the marketing campaign of the years marketing we must understand is all true levers inside people that are outside of logic. marketing and branding are not about facts they're about making you think something making you feel emotions and not knowing what's causing that and that's what these political campaigns are nowadays they are marketing exercise that is you just hit on the head i mean when we see billions of dollars poured into these campaigns it really does tap into the psychology of human beings and really does strike that cord but you also said something else following up on that you said this to form the puzzle is not the political logic of free and responsible people rather it's the cramped and twisted reasoning of someone trapped into a box urgently trying to convince himself that it's not really a box that pragmatic acceptance of the box as the whole of the great and free

universe is really all that can be hoped struggled and strived for it's not so bruce how do we get out of this proverbial box and who do we have to blame for this i mean the media for feeding us this message of the two party system or do we have ourselves to blame i mean the internet's available we do have the potential to find information about what's really going on so how do we get out of it and who's to blame. the media and the internet is part of the media in the united states are privatized they are owned by you know and billionaire corporations and that includes the internet so commercial messages predominate messages that are actually in the places that reach people have to go through the filter of. the group marketing the money from somebody then most people are not going to see these messages were there at all the internet is is out here but.

the truth is often hard to find and messages that are not subject to that marketing filter are shall we say difficult to find and everybody does need to have access to the whole of it in the united states there's something called the digital divide. that we all know about so i don't think we can but i certainly don't think that we can blame the people i think we can blame the corporate masters oh this country for building a social order that safeguards their interests and largely protects us from reality and protect us from the truth what should we do i think what we should do is we should give ourselves a vision that lasts longer horizons that are further out than just the next election cycle in just the next election that we limit ourselves to the horizons that democratic political consultants tell us about what's possible this year then

we're naturally for much. that's not the way people in the movement forty five years ago thought people in the movement forty five years ago were they were prepared to fight so hell freezes over whether they had that allies. to make sure or the white house or not and they never ever ever let their agendas be dictated by funders and did it and deed you know it really does require a vision that lasts longer than these four year election cycles or tear lection cycles and it really does cause a great deal of disillusionment doesn't powerman with the people when nothing does indeed change i did want to talk about another thing that you were writing about the debates the elections i mean i don't even want to talk about what they're going to talk about because we both know what's really telling here is the. lies of omission what do you think's going to be omitted from the dialogue tonight at these debates. or is there going to be omitted. the biggest one for me

is of the areas that is the many many areas that republicans and democrats agree on and one of the biggest for me is education both democrats and republicans are intent on dismantling public education and privatizing it through charters the professionalizing teachers and through all of turning around and closing down school districts and mass firings of teachers president obama's race to the top. of proposes to close five thousand schools around the country in the near future and replay it is that with charters while emanuel in chicago was putting this agenda into action when the teachers' strike you know became the first example here with resistance to the policy on a mass of there's many many other things that they agree on for instance what and

even some of the things that they pretend to disagree on like deportations and policies towards immigrants republicans outright say that they don't like immigrants and they want to court as many of them as they can you know bamma administration on the other hand got seventy percent of the vote and hopes to do the same again and says nice things about immigrants and a path to citizenship but they have deported more than a million immigrants in the first three years of obama's term and we need we know indeed that they will you know they definitely have both toe the line about military spending about the wars and continuity and like you said i mean the privatization of education bush's no child left behind pretty much mirrors arnie duncan is race to the top i mean they're both pushing privatization and charter schools of of. you know our our system where we're supposed to be helping children but bruce i have to wrap this up really quickly i want to talk about something that is really pressing and since you run the website black agenda report i want to ask

about the african community and you know since we have the first african-american president you said how and namor. community is with obama you said to many of us are busy vicariously worshipping that beautiful black family in that big white house and not focusing on the line up of the economic actors and political forces that shape the lives of our own families communities and neighborhoods but that's what royalty has always been for a circus circus and diversion so bruce do you think that the african american community now four years later is still warships them the same way or do you think that they're beginning to wake up to that he's no he's not really for the community . i think that a lot of people are beginning to wake up but that's only the beginning. of course of the mass media of the corporate media had an enormous influence and. will this leadership class has to has enormous and. is still widespread

and there's a whole class of actors in the black community who are engaged in promoting that illusion because it also promotes their careers obama does not come into existence . from a class of black opportunists that. you know are in high places in the democratic party so while people are waking up. president obama is definitely going to have all of the black vote this year again. that's just the reality of arrogance used to be the movable rock that the left wing of american policies now with a black president you know has there could be room bombings there could be illegal wars and. voices are heard of all things all bruce i think that you were right when you said earlier you know it requires a vision that vision that lasts much longer than even the president and the

republic the political establishment in general really requires that grassroots mobilization thank you so much for coming on breaking it down bruce dixon from the black agenda report. thank you for inviting us. so if you like what you see so far go to our youtube channel at youtube dot com bust break in the set and subscribe check out our facebook page at facebook dot com slash break in the set give us a like if you wonder about what i'm doing or bitching about when i'm not on air follow me on twitter at abby martin and i take a break from my preaching for now but stay tuned to hear what's wrong and afghanistan next. download the official publication so fun choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's t.v. is not required to watch all its he'd only need

a zero mobile device to watch on t any time any of the. culture is the same on the taxpayers' money i mean when i sit here and a real mystery has gotten me calling austerity reeling from one crisis to another the western world is going to the rescue of the banking and financial sectors those of. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. all right this we're going to mark the eleventh anniversary of the united states invasion of afghanistan a long as american military intervention in the history obama did has been lot of death victory lap at baghran announcing the end of combat missions in the country putting forth a deadline by the end of two thousand and fourteen today secretary of state hillary

clinton host of the u.s. afghanistan biological commission at the state department let's check out what she had to say. but despite the challenges the united states is committed to the people of afghanistan. and we have made progress together that too often is overlooked in the face of the headlines that talk about some unfortunate incident unfortunate incidents madam secretary to what headlines do you refer to were such a hinderance to your methods of success oh right you must mean these from the atlantic wire latest insider attack marks two thousand u.s. dead an afghan war and then there c.n.n. afghanistan green on blue attack show there's no easy way out we can't forget the b.b.c. from out a month ago three dead and baghran base attack you know background supposedly the most protected u.s.

base in the country well these headlines exemplify just a few of the impossible challenges that the u.s. military faces in its continued occupation so let's break it down a little bit further recently learned that the u.s. soldier deaths in afghanistan reached the two thousand mark half of which occurred just in the last two years but interestingly this figure was already reported on last year but really it doesn't matter if it's two or two thousand it should be zero because the invasion of afghanistan was a legal and immoral from the onset and hillary you say that the us government's committed to the afghan people so why is it that prior to two thousand and seven no one even did body counts of dead afghans. since two thousand and seven the official death count was thirteen thousand afghan civilians but what about the tens of thousands that were killed in the initial stages of the invasion when the country was being carpet bombed so there's thousands of casualties going into the twelfth year of an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation all that's resulted in is

a rise of anger and hostility toward the occupiers i.e. us any time you see headlines about these so-called green on blue attacks or insider killings think of it this way obama sent a surge of thirty three thousand troops in two thousand and nine and attempted to fuse the taliban but that didn't happen instead one could argue that the taliban was in fact strengthened by the growing frustration of the afghan people as a result of having their country bombed an occupied for over a decade but the taliban isn't where these green on blue attacks are coming from in fact the u.s. military has acknowledged that only about a quarter of these attacks are linked to the taliban. instead the very troops the u.s. has been training to take over after the withdrawal have now become the greatest threat to u.s. soldiers so how is this all going to play out well folks history repeats itself and we just have to look at the last time an occupying nation withdrew from afghanistan

the soviet union pulled out their troops in one thousand nine hundred ninety there was a six year power struggle in which the us helped the mujahideen now the taliban out of power funny how it all comes full circle hole right a war is always been about two things resources and control alongside the supposed surprise discovery of afghanistan's one trillion dollar wealth of untapped minerals the strategic position of occupied afghanistan is crucial for us to gemini gemini in the region also is it really a coincidence that before the us invasion the taliban and the un had a radical that the opium crop and now ninety percent of the world's heroin comes from the country and now we're fighting the same force we helped to create twenty years ago but hey at least the combat troops are finally on their way out right hold on we need to ask what it even means when the government says the combat troops are leaving or the last time obama announced an end to combat troops that

was iraq and yes many soldiers left but what about the tens of thousands of u.s. paid contractors and private mercenaries still operating in the country when will they be withdrawn from the same goes for afghanistan and end to a combat mission does not mean an end to the presence of nato troops cia operatives intelligence units and special forces troops in fact the u.s. in afghanistan signed a strategic pact that will allow thousands of special forces troops to remain there until twenty twenty four. but what we know about this and all wars is that both sides must at some point reach an agreement or some form of negotiation yet the us refuses to push forward with peace talks with the taliban so ultimately this leadership's refuses to admit the truth that this war is an abysmal failure this is a government whose too proud to admit defeat and too ready to sacrifice human beings as cannon fodder for their imperialist dick wars.

later this month fort lewis is fourth grade will deploy to afghanistan marking yet another deployment and if failed or under misguided policies one group of former u.s. soldiers is leading a crusade to end this illegitimate work just a few days the our lives our rights campaign will deploy a team of iraq afghanistan and vietnam veterans to fort lewis where they were in part to outbound soldiers one simple message you don't have to go here to talk more about how soldiers can resist and this campaign's ability to revolutionize the antiwar movement i'm joined by michael prysner iraq war veteran and co-founder of march forward michael thank you for joining me so high so you were soldier in iraq your experience there radicalized you and becoming a very vocal antiwar activist mike

a lot of people i talked to seem to think the afghanistan war is over why do you think people have this impression. well that's the narrative that's being put out by the mainstream media and by the generals and the politicians there saying everything is going as planned the withdrawal is going as planned don't pay attention to it everything's great but at the same time you see headlines showing that all of the pillars of the pentagon strategy that are crucial for any type of withdrawal that they're promising not in two thousand and fourteen but in two thousand and twenty four are completely falling apart training the afghan forces to replace so using the surge that is now over to break the momentum of the resistance which completely failed and a peace deal with the taliban that the u.s. has now completely abandoned because that is hopeless as well and so we're seeing that the strategy has gone completely up in smoke in the politicians and generals agree that the war is lost and cannot be won because the people of afghanistan

refuse to be occupied by a foreign army and so that brings up the question you know if they know the war is lost they know that the majority of america. and afghans oppose it they know it's a humanitarian disaster for the people who had no role the nine eleven attacks and that squandering precious tax dollars why aren't they ending the war now and just bringing everyone home immediately which is what most people in the united states in the military in afghanistan favor and the answer to that is it because those politicians and generals do not want to accept responsibility for a military defeat they don't want a saigon moment where you know people from the u.s. embassy are being airlifted from helicopters into retreat and so what they're planning to do now is to drag out this war for years to kind of slow motion withdrawal where hundreds possibly thousands of u.s. soldiers are going to die and lose limbs where many thousands more afghans will die for no other reason than the politicians and generals not wanting to be embarrassed and so that i got a question that's a very good service members go and fight that war and the answer is they shouldn't

write it and let's get into what you're doing to help soldiers resist you co-founded march forward you're a member of the answer coalition now you're chartering a revolutionary event and light of the anniversary of the afghanistan invasion talk about what you're doing and for a. while those of us in march forward as an organization of veterans of iraq and afghanistan and vietnam and many active duty service members as well we're recognizing that this is a very dire situation i mean the politicians and generals have been treating our lives like they do not matter at all both when they're sending us to war and when we come home from war and need help so there needs to be drastic action to change this and so we launched this campaign called our lives our rights which has the simple message of we don't have to go to afghanistan and its purpose is to reach out to service members with information about legal rights and options they have to avert deployment becoming a conscientious objector demanding better treatment for p.t.s.d. legal options if they feel that they must go a while we partnered with the organization veterans for peace to embark on this

trip to fort lewis where a unit of fourth brigade of the second infantry division is deploying. in late october early november to afghanistan so we're going to be there with those of us who have served in uniform and people who are still serving in uniform to pass out thousands of flyers put up thousands of posters and stickers and banners that say we don't have to go to afghanistan we shouldn't go to afghanistan and here's how we can do it so you know you mentioned there's multiple other options than someone just kind of going to a wall which you guys are facilitating to help support and offering these options for soldiers to resist mike why is it so important to kind of go to the crux of of the military machine here well quite simply because if we leave washington in the pentagon up to its own devices the status quo is just going to continue and the generals and politicians have proven unwilling and unable to treat our lives and the lives of our friends in the lives of the afghan people like they matter at all

and the only thing that's going to change that is veterans is active duty service members it's military families coming together organizing together and fighting back against that changing chain of command that that's throwing away our lives just to play politics is this indeed the only thing that can really revolutionize the antiwar movement is getting active service soldiers to resist going to these wars mike. what has a long and proud history in the u.s. military the vietnam war only ended because of the resistance of the vietnamese people and the heroic resistance of the us anti-war movement here in the states but people don't really know the history that there was a massive widespread rebellion within the ranks of the u.s. military itself that refused to go on missions that sabotage the equipment that said this is an immoral war this is a war where people are dying soldiers are dying civilians are dying for absolutely no reason in this political chess game for the rich and that we're not going to be a part of it in fact we're going to use our position in the military to fight

against it that brought down the vietnam war and if we want the afghanistan war to end it's going to take a movement in the streets here in the united states and within the ranks of the military as well and that's what we're fighting to build and really quickly mike to wrap it up just tell people how they can help where they can go to get more information go to our lives our rights or and to learn all about the campaign the trip we're going on for at louis and how you can help so our lives are right to learn it all right thank you so much for coming on my prisoner of the answer coalition. so what mike and others are doing is necessary to help the gears of the military machine let's take an even bigger step back and ask ourselves why do we will this occupation really and the truth is it probably won't because the united states has never left a country that it's invaded these military interventions leave a normal bases that station our troops and definitely america still has troops stationed in vietnam germany iraq and even japan in fact the u.s.

military has nine hundred bases and one hundred and thirty countries across the planet and every new war in another country breeds yet another post colonial launchpad they keep telling us that they're drawing down the troops that this is the beginning of the end but it's clear that this is just the end of the beginning . about. playing.

live. overcoming a barrier like this seems possible. but then you create something higher. and when you reach stuff you. go do whatever it takes to get on the top of the world on artie's wealthy british. time expires.